New user looking for ideas

Hello! My name is Jim and I am new to the site. I am from Indianapolis. I am in the planning process of building a new kitchen table for my family and am filled with questions. I am using a piece of a bowling lane as the table top. The top is made of several pieces of southern yellow pine that are glued and nailed together with the outer edges made of a strip of maple.

I am by no means a woodsman so this project will be challenging but ultimately rewarding for me. I have cut the table top down to a length of 68" to fit in my kitchen. It is 42" wide and 2 1/4" thick. I would like to make this a trestle style table so that it can be taken apart when I need to move it. The top is extremely heavy!

My questions are what type of wood should I use to finish out the table? Right now I am leaning toward soft maple so that the table is not made out of three different types of woods. What type of stain will look and work best with the pine and maple. Also, I am open to ideas for designs for the table. Currently I have a design in mind that I found in a book from the library.

Any input or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,

Hi Jim,

Welcome to the forum.

I'm having some difficulty envisioning the table top, can you post a photo? How wide are the strips in the top? I assume they're fairly narrow, such as 2" to 3" widths? If you get into large widths of say 5" or more, you want to fit floating breadboard ends to the table top to control warpage. Where is the maple strip on the table?

Maple makes an excellent table base. Its strong, cuts and turns well, and can take any color stain nicely. If you are going to do a painted base, then Poplar will be just as good and less costly.

If you decide to do a shoefoot Trestle table, make sure the footed base has a 'pad' on each end rather than straight cut. Without the pads, they rock like mad on even the most squared up floor.

Sounds like a fun project!